Sarkarispeak from the Ramparts

Sarkarispeak from the Ramparts

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh can walk quite fast without swinging his arms. There is a little movement at the wrists, that is all. He holds himself erect, head held high, wearing his characteristic sky blue turban and exuding a sense of accomplishment. And well he might. This is the 8^th time he’s taken the lift to the ramparts of Red Fort.

Watching him walk the red carpet briskly as he arrived to address the nation on the occasion of Independence Day 15August 2012, one has to admire his inscrutability under the lenses of all those satellite channels.

This confident if opaque body language extends to his message to the nation, where he spent the bulk of his speech delivered in a near monotone, to extol the accomplishments of his Government’s years in power.

The people of India may find themselves a little underwhelmed by his longish laundry list of incremental gains, garnished with generous doses of statistical spin. On the ground things may not seem to have moved very much, but, the mood is distinctly self-congratulatory.

As for the future, Dr. Singh would have us believe, never mind the grid collapses of recent times, that “our next target is to provide electricity to each and every household in our country in the next 5 years and to also improve the supply of electricity”. The first part refers to being connected universally, improbable as that might be. The second part however is a near impossibility, wisely left as a vague promise.

The big new idea is the vocational sounding National Skill Development Council. This entity plans to develop the skills of “8 crore people” who “will be trained in the next five years”. We will have to wait and see.

Prime Minister Singh also brazened his way through the lack of momentum in infrastructure development. He said, “We have taken new measures”, and referred to “Ambitious targets”.  Apparently, the Prime Minister is not daunted by non-performance. 

He goes on, despite the howling protests from foreign investors and Governments at the UPA Government’s unfriendly taxation and retrospective scrutiny moves that: “we will have to create confidence at the international level that there are no barriers to investment in India”.

 The Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, the antithesis in style to our Prime Minister, shouts “Off with his head” frequently. Dr. Manmohan Singh delivers regular commentary on his Government’s failed economic grades with contrasting sang froid.

(406 words)

August 15, 2012
Gautam Mukherjee

Published in NITI CENTRAL www.niticentral.com, as a news item on 16th August 2012.